President Joe Biden ran on a platform that condemned former President Donald Trump as unfit, embarrassing, and reckless, but while Biden might complain that Trump will “go down in history as being one of the most irresponsible presidents,” his administration appears to be using the Republican’s decisions, policies, and stances to inform their own.
“Can I copy your homework?”
“Yeah just change it a up a bit so it doesn’t look obvious you copied” pic.twitter.com/dS3eQpi4RN
— Gates McGavick (@GatesMcgavick) April 7, 2021
Here are some of the ways the Biden administration is embracing Trump’s actions and policies despite their professed vehement opposition to the former administration.
COVID Vaccines
Biden’s chief of staff Ron Klain was quick to claim the Democratic administration was “inheriting a huge mess” when it came to the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, but that didn’t stop the president from relying on the campaign created for him by Trump’s Operation Warp Speed to ensure he reached his goal of distributing 100 million doses in his first 100 days in office.
Trump had similar vaccination goals and implementation plans regarding states, but the Republican’s efforts to popularize and facilitate the vaccine rollout was booed and written off by the corporate media as “disastrous,” “a mess,” and a “dismal failure.” Biden’s efforts, however, were hailed as “ambitious” and a “big goal” even though the United States was well on its way to accomplishing millions of doses distributed before he was inaugurated. Shortly after Biden assumed office, the country was administering more than a million vaccine doses a day.
As of Thursday, 940,000 shots a day were administered on average over a seven-day period, according to data from the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker. The most recent two days topped a million doses.
Border Wall
Biden was quick to pull back some of Trump’s biggest immigration reforms including issuing an executive order on his first day in office that terminated funding for a border wall. Now that the border crisis created by Biden’s rhetoric and policies is growing at rapid, record-breaking rates, the president’s administration is reconsidering some of his predecessor’s approaches to curb illegal crossings, including finishing parts of the border wall.
Despite the White House’s promises to handle the “border challenge” differently than Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas signaled that the Biden administration is considering resuming border wall construction to address “gaps,” “gates,” and even areas “where the wall has been completed but the technology has not been implemented.”
Building a border wall was a big part of Trump’s campaign platform and was quickly made a priority on his list of things to do while in office. Just five days after he arrived at White House in 2017, the Republican issued an executive order directing the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
China and Foreign Policy
It was long after Biden assumed office that his Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted to the Senate that Trump was right to crack down on China. While Blinken said he “disagreed” with how the Republican president handled some things, he also acknowledged that a “tougher approach to China” was the “right one” for American foreign policy.
He also praised the president for orchestrating peace between Israel and other countries in the Middle East, despite his own office’s downplaying of it later.
“I think there are a number of things, from where I sat, that the Trump administration did beyond our borders that I would applaud,” Blinken said.
Tariffs
While some Democrats frowned on the Trump administration’s use of tariffs, especially those imposed on China, Biden’s Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo recently told reporters that some of Trump’s tariffs “have in fact helped save American jobs in steel and aluminum industries.”
“What do we do with tariffs? We have to level the playing field,” Raimondo said. “China’s actions are uncompetitive, coercive, underhanded — they’ve proven they’ll do whatever it takes.”
The Biden administration also defended Trump’s tariffs in March after some corporations argued they “illegally increased the number of Chinese goods subject to duties under Section 301 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974.”
“The Court should not interpose” on the issue, the Biden administration stated in a legal brief.
